Not that many (did you?!) believed the silly rumors that kept saying how Wrath of the Lich King would be Blizzard's final expansion for World of Warcraft… but, it doesn't hurt to hear it from one of the Lead Designer's just to feel completely reassured.
Some fun facts about expansions and MMOs is that the old school game EverQuest is still releasing expansions and they're up to 14 expansions so far, with a new one planned for October the 21st.Now, EQ had at its peak somewhere around 700,000 subscribers, while WoW has above 10,000,000. It's not exactly rocket science to understand that we're going to see tons of expansions for WoW.
Question is what's next after Northrend. My guess is Emerald Dream. There are many other speculations as well, but I'm rooting for Emerald Dream, since it has huge potential and I love the lore behind it. Sure, Maelstrom or Undermine has enormous potential as well.Either way, it's likely that we won't hear anything about this for some time.
“We actually already have ideas on how we’re going to expand on that in the future,” Chilton told us when asked if more land was going to be added to the game...[a lot of] the major landmasses that we talked about heavily in previous WarCraft game have already come to fruition, although there are still areas of the game that we’ve talked about and set up story-wise that we haven’t revealed yet. So there’s definitely more to go.”
-- Tom Chilton, Lead Designer
It's actually quite amusing to read posts by some players saying that since Arthas is such a powerful adversary, Wrath of the Lich King should be the last expansion until WarCraft 4 or World of Warcraft 2. What those people do not realize is how MMOs tend to bend the lore and always aim to expand. MMOs have no final boss or a "THE END" type of ending.It's one of the main selling points and also why we pay a monthly fee.
Sure, many are new to MMOs and it will take them awhile to understand how they work, but even trying to speculate or thinking along those lines will only end up in disappointment. Luckily the majority – including me – are happy to know that WoW will expand over and over. Perhaps within two-three years from now, we'll be having Emerald Dream, Undermine and The Maelstrom?Highly possible and most likely there will be even more due to the free content patches in between as well.
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